NEXTletter | What do you want? | ready by Frederik

What do you want? No, really, right now. What do you actually want? I've been sitting with that question since last weekend. I was at Esalen. It's one of the oldest human potential institutes in California, on the cliffs above the Pacific. I was there not as a speaker, not as a teacher, just as a participant, just curious. And one exercise stopped me me. We were asked to write a list. 10 things, 20 things, 30. Anything we genuinely want right now. There was no filter, no editing for reasonableness. So, a better relationship, deeper connection, feeling truly loved. But also things like a car, maybe a bicycle, maybe a necklace. Anything. And then one woman in the circle shared her list out loud. She got to feeling truly free, more time with her kids. And then, with this small smile, she said, and a Cartier bracelet. The room laughed. She laughed. But then she said with the question, when you have this bracelet, how does it make you feel? And she got quiet. And then she said, seen, like someone noticed. And I found myself thinking, how often do we do this? The bracelet was never the point. It was a delivery mechanism for a feeling. We tell ourselves we want the promotion, the relationship, the house, the book deal. The successful startup or company. But if we are honest, those things often carry a much deeper request. Somewhere inside the achievement we imagine lives a feeling we've been longing for all along. So the question isn't, what do you want? The question is, what feeling are you hoping your future will give you? And psychologists have known this forever. Maslow mapped it in the 1940s. Belonging, significance, safety, love. We reach for these things because the feeling is harder to name. But also Buddhism noticed it centuries earlier. There was a word in Pali called tanhā. It's often translated as craving, but literally what it means is thirst, not hunger, thirst. And the teaching isn't stop wanting, it's see clearly what you're actually thirsty for. Because when you know that, you can drink from many springs. And then I thought about my kids. When they ask for something, it sounds material on the surface, like a toy or a bike, staying up a little later. But what they remember years later, it's never the thing. They remember being chosen, being listened to, being important enough for someone to put everything else aside just for a moment. They want connection and call it a toy. They want belonging And they call it maybe a sleepover. They want to matter and call it maybe a birthday party. And somewhere along the way, most of us become less fluent in the language of feelings and more fluent in the language of achievements. We stop saying, I want to feel appreciated, and start saying, I want a bigger role. So the feeling doesn't disappear. It just puts on a different costume. So here's something I want you to try. It's an invitation. It's 3 steps, about 15 minutes. First, open a blank page and write down everything you want right now. Full permission. Nothing is too small, too embarrassing, too large. Aim for at least 15 things. Second, go back through that list. Next to each item, write one word, the feeling you imagine having it would give you. Like seen, feel, free, proud, love, safe. Just don't overthink it. First word that arrives. And third, find a feeling that appears more than once. And then ask yourself this: what are 3 things I could do right now today to create this feeling? Not next year. I don't mean in a month. I mean right now. And write them down. Pick one. Do it before the week is over. Friends, the future matters. Goals matter. Dreams matter. But before you ask what future you want to create, it might be worth asking a quieter question. What feeling are you hoping to find when you arrive? And what if you didn't have to wait? If something surfaced for you Reply to this next letter. Tell me what feeling came up. I read every single one. And if you know someone who is chasing something right now, send them this. Ask them the question: What feeling are you really reaching for? This is Frederik G. Pferdt, and this is Next Letter.